In a revealing conversation, Marcos Morcillo, director of Micofora (Forest and Applied Mycology), takes us to the heart of the science and technology that have transformed the world of truffles. With 30 years of experience, Morcillo explains how research has turned this business into a prosperous industry.
From the origins of his research career to the current technical advancements in the sector, Morcillo unveils the secrets behind producing truffle trees, the importance of irrigation, and the crucial role fungi play in this process. This interview demonstrates why Spain has become a world leader in truffle production and how innovation continues to open new paths.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Marcos Morcillo. I am the director of Micología Forestal y Aplicada, which we call Micofora. I got into the truffle and mycology sector when I finished my degree in biology. Afterward, I began researching with mycorrhizal fungi, especially edible mycorrhizal fungi, and I got "inoculated."
When and how did your journey in the world of truffles begin?
One day, 30 years ago, when I was 22 and now I'm 52, my professor asked for two pairs of hands to dig holes and make a truffle plantation. So, 30 years ago, we started that plantation, and since then, I've been "inoculated" with the truffle plantation business.
What's Micofora's main philosophy and how has it evolved?
I think one of Micofora's main pillars is that we're based on research. We dedicate a lot of time to trying to develop new products and technologies for the truffle business. The first steps of Micofora are what we would now call a "spin-off" or "startup" from the University of Barcelona. At that time, we mainly did research on edible mycorrhizal fungi like ceps, saffron milk caps, or "pebrassos," which all Catalans go crazy for. Step by step, we started working with truffles, and honestly, they generate more interest and money, so more and more, the focus shifted to the truffle business.
How has the truffle sector changed over the years?
The sector has changed a lot over the past few years, even decades. I've been in this business for 30 years, and I still remember the old conferences from the '90s, where everyone talked more about ecology and soil pH, which are still important. But there have been big steps forward, especially since DNA techniques appeared, which helped us advance. The sector has become completely technified with special tools and ways of managing the plantations.
Could you explain the process of inoculating trees for truffle production?
You asked me about the process we use to inoculate trees and produce truffle trees. I can't tell you everything, but the process and this "know-how" are protected by intellectual property rights, and in fact, it's one of the technologies we license abroad. Roughly, it's a process that usually lasts a year. It starts around Christmas when you sow a seed. These are pines, but for black truffles, we mainly work with holm oaks, so you would sow an acorn. Around Christmas, after two months, when they develop secondary roots, you put them in contact with the truffle, which we call "inoculating." And then a few months later, five, six, or eight months later, the tree is fully mycorrhized with truffles, and these trees can be sold on the market.
What role does substrate play in modern trufficulture?
The substrate—which almost all truffle growers in Spain and even abroad are also adapting—is super important because maybe only 10 years ago, we started to understand how truffles reproduce. All these new DNA techniques were like opening a black box and understanding how the truffle works in the soil and saying, "Oh, so that's how it is." When I'm planting this tree, I'm only planting the female part of the truffle. So there's a lack of males in the soil, and nowadays we know that all the males come from new spores that you need to add every spring to the plantation.
How do you work with Laumont and why is a supplier like them important?
We ended up working with Laumont because we need to use a huge amount of truffles, and we can't use just any truffle. Not every truffle can be used to produce inoculants. It needs to be of a specific size. We don't know if there's a genetic trait that makes one truffle bigger than another, so just in case, we use big truffles, usually more than 100 grams. With truffles from 100 to 150 grams, there are many fewer PCR and lab tests we need to do. And we need someone who can provide you with them so you can sell them. Every year we use 300 kilos. Maybe this year or in other years, more. To get 300 kilos, you need to at least analyze probably a ton of truffles one by one. So not just any supplier can offer you a ton of truffles of a certain grade, a certain type, and size during the season, to use those volumes of inoculants to produce our own products, but also all the inoculants we supply abroad to other nurseries and producers in the world.
To which countries is the truffle business expanding?
In recent years, the truffle business has really taken off, and it has seriously taken off in other countries. In any other Mediterranean climate where you can find four seasons, which is a Mediterranean climate, you can cultivate truffles. That's in Chile, in Argentina, in South Africa, in Australia, New Zealand, the island of Tasmania. And then in the northern hemisphere, it's most of the Mediterranean, but then the United States is starting to take things very seriously. In the end, we have been in all these places with nurseries producing truffle trees.
Why is Spain a leading country in truffle production?
You're asking me why Spain is so successful and a leading country in truffle production, and I think it's because, first, there are many research groups in Spain doing, I mean, fundamental research is good and should be done, but they are doing a lot of applied research. Then there's a very good transfer of these results to the producers, to the business, and that's why they adapt quite quickly to all the new techniques and developments from research to industry. And maybe the other thing is that there really is an industry. There are thousands of producers in Spain, there are more than 20,000 hectares of truffle farms, that means thousands of producers who are developing themselves, always looking for ways to produce more truffles, to reduce the cost of management, and to reduce the cost to produce one kilo of truffles, so they are developing new tools, new ways to do everything better and faster. And maybe the third and most important point is that we in Spain cannot depend on the rain, so people have been systematically investing in irrigation. Irrigation is half the cost of any truffle farm, more than the trees and everything; it's the irrigation and good, technified irrigation, especially with monitoring sensors. A truffle is 80% water, so we need to keep the soil moist, and the truffle, especially the black truffle, forms in early summer and grows during the summer. And in the old days, maybe 40 years ago, it rained during the summer with some storms, they could depend on the rain, but not nowadays with global climate change, heatwaves, and a lack of rain. If we don't invest in irrigation, we're not going to get truffles, but because we have invested, no matter the climate, no matter what the summer is going to be like, we can normally have a good production year every year.
How is this focus on innovation improving the quality of truffles?
On one hand, we are able to get probably bigger and more productive fruiting bodies, and with management and new techniques in the soil, we are trying to improve the quality of the truffles, mainly in their shape, because in the end, truffle classification is a lot about how round, how much like a "golf ball" I can get it. So we are modifying soils, crushing rocks, removing rocks, getting a softer soil, creating special nests with this special substrate where truffles can grow round and bigger. So we are improving that quality, and we are even trying to work now with all these bacteria that we are developing. Keep in mind that the truffle has a really complex aroma, probably more than 100-150 volatile organic compounds that make up the aroma, but not all of these aromas are produced by the truffle. Half of them—or we don't know exactly how many—are produced by the bacteria that live in association with the truffle and live in the soil. Each soil, each "terroir," has a different bacterial community that will express a different aroma profile. And probably in the future with the work and research we are doing, we will be able to slightly improve this aroma by using different bacterial strains.
What are the mysteries of truffles that you are still trying to solve?
I think there are still some mysteries, things we don't know exactly. It even seems stupid, but we don't know exactly what makes a truffle bigger, what makes you get a huge truffle instead of a small one. It can be the water, it can be the soil compaction, of course, but what nutrient makes the truffle grow and develop? We are still doing a lot of research on that, which is going to help develop fertilizers. Maybe we are still, for example, developing all these products with bacteria because we know they play a really important role in truffle development, and when we inoculate with a specific bacteria in the nursery or in the plantations, we see that they improve truffle production and multiply the concentration of truffle mycelium sometimes by 80 times, so it's a lot, it boosts the mycelium in the soil, but we don't know why it's happening. We don't know the biological processes that lead to this reaction in the truffle.
Are there other types of truffles you are focusing on?
There's a growing interest in developing other truffle species. The market is asking for it. Also, if you are a producer in northern European countries, where it's too cold to plant black truffle, which is a winter truffle, you can cultivate Burgundy truffle, which is a truffle that grows in autumn. For example, here we are cultivating pines with Tuber borchii. The Tuber borchii is a whitish truffle with less of a market now, but the market is increasing its value. Tuber borchii in the wild can be sold on the market for 100-150 euros per kilo, but on farms where we irrigate, where we decompact the soil, the fruiting bodies are quite big, so the price on the market is the same in the end, at wholesale, as the Tuber melanosporum. Yes, and one of the other truffles we are focusing a lot of research and effort on is trying to develop the cultivation of Tuber magnatum, the famous Italian white truffle. And because we now know how to produce a truffle tree, we set up the whole DNA lab to track the mycelium and the mycorrhizae in the nursery and in the soil, but honestly, we don't know anything about the cultivation of this truffle, so we will need a few years to know how we should manage it, if we should cultivate it, how we water it, how it reproduces, all these kinds of things. So we are like with the black truffle 20 years ago, when we started producing these truffle trees, but now knowing a lot more, honestly, with a lot of incredible techniques that will help us go faster in that research.
What advice would you give to a producer who wants to start growing truffles?
The first piece of advice to a producer who wants to start growing truffles, I think, would be to do their homework, to do proper due diligence, and to first check their climate and soil to see if they're suitable. Because nowadays we can cultivate truffles anywhere in the world, but it's one thing to grow one or two fruiting bodies and another to get a commercial harvest and make money. So those are two different things, and that's why you need to do due diligence. Second, when you plant trees, you need to verify and analyze those trees. This is an important thing that also helped the Spanish industry take off in a serious way. If you verify and check the quality of the trees before planting, you know you're going to be successful. The third and perhaps most important thing is don't plant if you don't have water for irrigation. So if you're not going to have a minimum of one, preferably two million liters per hectare per year—that means 2,000 cubic meters per hectare per year—don't plant truffles because we cannot depend on rain. And keep in mind that planting a truffle plantation now costs more money than in the old days, right? But at the same time, you can track the mycelium, you can track the truffle's growth over the years, so cultivation has become very technical, and we can guarantee a certain kind of result.
